What Makes a Family?
by DebC75
Summary: Matt, Mohinder and Molly find out just what it takes to make a family AU, set in the gap between season 1 & 2
1. Chapter 1

Part 1

_Oh good, he's asleep. If he stays that way then I won't have to deal with him at all. Just drop this off and walk away from everything. _

_No, not walk, run. Run as far and fast as I can. Just get away, Janice. From this marriage... this life ... wasn't what I wanted out of my adult life. Wasn't... _

It took Matt a while to realize that the words cutting through the pain-killer-induced fog which seemed to surround him these days weren't being spoken aloud, but rather, being thought

_... how I expected my life to turn out. And now there's a baby and ... _

_... should just tell him that the baby isn't his. Then he won't fight me over this. _

by a rather emotionally incoherent Janice. His wife, although the words she was thinking so strongly that they cut through the clouds in his brain also cut straight through his heart the more he listened to them.

_... Nurse said he was pretty much of it. Maybe if he wakes up now, I can get him to sign these damned papers and I can get on with my life._

At this, Matt winced internally. At least, he thought it was internally, but a second later, he heard Janice's voice, this time out loud and accompanied by her hand on his forehead. Gentle, like a mother soothing her child after a long illness or a bad dream.

"Matt, baby..." she cooed. "Can you hear me? It's me, Janice. I'm here now, I'm here."

From outside the door, Matt could hear Dr. Suresh speaking to one of the nurses, who politely told him that 'Mrs. Parkman is in with him now Mr. Suresh, but you and the little girl are welcome to wait as long as you like.' Next, he heard Dr. Suresh ask Molly if she wanted lunch from the cafeteria or 'that horrid fast food place you like so much?' Molly squealed something excited and incoherent, but now Matt couldn't hear what it was because they had moved away from the door.

"McDonald's," he mumbled, making these his first waking words instead of a reply to Janice. Slowly, he opened his eyes.

"What is it?" Janice cooed again, and by now, Matt was starting to wonder if she wasn't laying it on thick because nurses' station was right outside his room and all the nurses probably knew this was her first visit since he had been brought in. "You want McDonalds food?"

Matt shook his head, though it felt more like awkward flopping about than a controlled movement.

Damn meds, anyway. He hated being drugged. It reminded him too much of being taken by Bennett and held against his will, of being helpless one more time in his life. And here he was, stuck in this hospital bed while his wife cooed and fawned over him in a way she never had in their day-to-day lives and he was pretty sure that, when he factored in her thoughts, meant she wanted a divorce.

"Not me," he said, his voice still sounding sleep. "Molly. The girl outside, just now. She likes Happy Meals and Dr. Suresh can't stand the place." Matt would bet anything that he took her, anyway.

"And these are people you know?" Janice asked, her eyes narrowing a little as she watched him.

"Sort of." Not until he had wound up in this hospital bed while trying to save Molly... and the world along with her. But Matt didn't say any thing like that to Janice because she was frowning now and he _knew _what that frown meant.

Janice was done being Ms. Nice Guy... er, Gal.

_Well, it's nice to know that he's been off making friends... sort of... while I've been left to clean up the mess he made of our lives ... while I'm nearly five months pregnant now, too. _

Ouch, okay that one hurt a lot and Matt could almost swear he felt the vitriol she flung at him as well as the actual words she didn't.

"I can still hear you, you know," he said, sounding cranky even in his own ears.

"I thought we agreed you wouldn't do that to me," she accused. "You've been spying on my thoughts this whole time, haven't you? Haven't you?"

"No! No! Not on purpose, anyway. I don't think I can help it, right now. The stuff they've got me on... it muddles my mind."

Janice crossed her arms, folding them across her chest with an annoyed frown. "Why should I believe that? You've done it before."

"Not since you asked me not to," Matt told her tiredly. "I can't control it right now, though, whether you want to believe me or not."

"Then you should know why I'm here," she said, ignoring the rest in a haughty way Matt had always disliked about his wife but had often overlooked because he loved her.

"You want a divorce." The words were whispered as if Matt thought saying them softly would take away their power or meaning.

"All you have to do is sign," she said, pulling the papers out of her handbag and placing them on his bed.

"Just like that? What if I don't want to? What if I don't want to give up on us, Janice?"

"There is no 'us' anymore, Matthew. There hasn't been for a while now. You're just too stupid to notice it. Or maybe you just don't want to. I don't know, but I'm tired of pretending to be happy when I'm not. And I'm sick of all this reading minds bullshit and everything that has come with it. I want a normal life, and that's something you cannot give me."

Matt didn't say anything. He couldn't say anything at all, in fact. He did pick up the papers, though, skimming over them and wishing not for the last time that his brain wasn't so muddled. The legalese was confusing enough without having to filter it through the Jello between his ears.

"Just sign the damn papers, Matthew!" Janice yelled at him.

"Is that really what you want?" he asked, resigning himself to the fact that he had no choice here. They were married in California, and by California law, if Janice wanted this divorce, he had to give it to her.

"Yes."

It was that simple to rip his heart out and destroy their lives. Matt didn't have the strength or the energy to argue with her right now. Or try to convince her to give their marriage another shot. And after what he'd heard in her mind a few minutes ago, he wasn't sure if he even really wanted to. But this... he had never wanted his marriage to fail. And he would never have walked out on his wife if the tables were turned and she was in the hospital.

Defeated, he took the pen she held out to him and scrawled what looked like his name on the bottom on the papers. Shoving them back in her general direction, he rolled as best he could onto one side and glared out the window, not looking back when she walked out of room without so much as a thank you or a good-bye.

"Good-bye, Janice," he muttered as he shut his eyes and tried to shut out the pain of losing another family before it had the chance to begin.


	2. Chapter 2

Part 2

Two duffle bags so full they looked like their zippers might burst sat in the corner of Matt's hospital room. They had appeared one afternoon after Matt woke up from a boredom-induced nap. Janice had left a note on his side table, but had not bothered to wake him up for something as trivial as giving him his clothes.

The note said, _The rest of your stuff is in a storage unit on Johnston Street. I've paid it through til the end of the month, after that, it's on you to do something with it. _

Beside the note was a key to the storage place. The owner's number was taped to it.

At first, no one said anything about them, but since Matt had no where to go and no one to take them off his hands, they continued to sit there well past a couple of days. Finally, the head nurse came in and explained that the bags would have to go.

"I have no one to take them," Matt told her. "My wife just threw me out." The woman looked sad, expressed her sympathies and left. She didn't say anything else about them after that, and neither did anyone else. The bags just sat there like white elephants in the corner of the room.

Not even Dr. Suresh or Molly said anything about them after the first day. Molly had bounced into the room, seen the bags and asked if Matt was getting out soon.

"Not yet, kiddo," Matt had assured her and added that his wife had brought them so he could have some comforts of home. Bitterly, he realized that Dr. Suresh would not be so easily convinced. The Indian man raised one perfectly exotic eyebrow at him and said nothing. His thoughts, before Matt closed off his mind as best he could, betrayed the inevitable truth.

And thus it was that, a week later, they still sat there collecting dust while Matt listened to Molly talk about something she had seen on television – a movie about a teenage age girl who suddenly discovers she's a princess.

"I think it would be neat to be a princess," she told them both. "Don't you, Mohinder?" she asked, and then wrinkled her nose. "You can't be a princess. You're a boy. You and Matt can be princes instead."

Dr. Suresh smiled and so did Matt. He couldn't help it, really; the little girl was so adorable and sweet. He would have loved to have a daughter like her someday. Not that he saw that happening any time soon, now that the ink had dried on the divorce papers and Janice was busy erasing all traces of him from her life.

"Molly," Dr. Suresh asked, suddenly, in his cultured patient way, "Would you be a dear and refill Matthew's water?"

Molly hesitated, looking from one to the other, and then nodded. She reached for the Pepto Bismal

pink water pitcher and skipped out of the room to fill it with ice and fresh water. At the door, she twiddled her fingers 'good-bye' and was gone. Matt couldn't help but think back to the day he first met her and how different she seemed from that day.

"She likes you," the other man was saying as they both turned their eyes away from the door. "More importantly, Matthew, she trusts you." _For Molly to have gone through everything she has and still trust someone, that says a great deal about this man._

Matt heard the words in his head despite his best efforts to block them. He figured that Dr. Suresh had a very strong, passionate mind, because sometimes the things he thought just leaked through, no matter what.

He nodded. "She's a really special little girl," he said with an affectionate smile.

"She calls you her savior."

Matt nodded. "I was there when Sylar killed her family. I found her... hiding inside a wall. For a while, the cops watching her couldn't get her to listen to anyone but me."

Now it was Mohinder's turn to nod, thoughtfully. "Today, she asked me where you would go when you left the hospital. Those..." He indicated to the bags in the corner. "...have her worried that you have no place to live."

"I don't," Matt replied, the two words hurting him as much as the divorce itself had.

"I thought as much; I'm sorry."

Matt shrugged. "Don't be. It's not your problem. My wife and I -- " he shook his head, not really sure why it felt 'normal' to talk to this man like this. A stranger he'd only known for these days he'd been in the hospital. "I guess I should have seen it coming. We'd been having problems on and off for a while. I guess now it's just ... off."

Dr. Suresh looked sympathetic and for a moment – a silent moment in which the other man's thoughts were thankfully in another language – neither of them spoke. Matt focused on the sounds coming from outside the room – the footsteps, the low voices, the random thoughts of 'what a cute little girl' coming from the nurses who passed Molly in the hallway.

Finally, he turned to his companion and said, point blank, "You had a reason for bringing all this up, didn't you?"

"I did. Molly expects you to move in with us once you are released."

Matt choked on the air in his lungs and coughed. "What!?" He could scarcely believe what he was hearing and had no idea what would have prompted it.

"As I said before, Matthew – she likes you."

"I like her, too, but," Matt began to protest, but Mohinder was talking again.

"Molly trusts you, Matthew. She's all alone in this world and for whatever reason, she's adopted you into her life just as she has done with me. If you've no other place to go, why not come home with us? It could be as temporary as you wish."

Matt opened his mouth to answer, totally unsure of what answer would actually come out when he spoke, and the door swung open. Molly and a nurse entered, the nurse carrying the water pitcher while Molly held a purple ice pop in her hand.

"The nurse says she needs Matt for a while," Molly announced, holding the popsicle out to Dr. Suresh. "Want a taste, Mohinder?"

"No, thank you, sweetheart," Mohinder said, warily, and stood up to leave. "Why don't we go now. We can go to the park." When they reached the door, Mohinder turned and looked pointedly at Matt. "Think about what I said," he said quietly.

"I will," Matt found himself promising. He didn't know Dr. Suresh at all and Molly was just a little he'd saved while doing his job, but having them here on a regular basis had become the one thing he looked forward to each day.

It would be nice to have a home to go to. Even a temporary one.


	3. Chapter 3

Part 3

Matt dropped his two lonely duffle bags on the floor beside the couch and looked around the apartment where he'd be staying for the time being. It looked too small for all three of them, but he didn't dare say that in front of Molly, who was more than overjoyed to have him there. Happiness radiated off the little girl like sunshine and even if Matt did have doubts about this whole thing, he couldn't help but bask in the warmth of it while he could.

He spotted the folded blanket and pillow at the far end of the couch and chuckled ruefully. "Well, it wouldn't be the first time I've had to sleep on the couch," he commented, earning himself a puzzled look from both Molly and Dr. Suresh.

"You're silly, Matt!" Molly informed him and grabbed his hand, dragging him towards the back of the apartment. "You just got home from the hospital. People who've been in the hospital don't sleep on the couch."

She pulled him into a room on the left side of the narrow hallway and announced that this was where he would be staying. A cursory glance told Matt that this was Dr. Suresh's bedroom and he felt a stab of guilt go through him, especially when the Indian geneticist followed them into the room carrying his bags.

"You really don't have to put yourself out for me," he said to the man. "I'm fine with sleeping on the couch." He had expected as much when the offer to stay with them had been extended in the first place.

"Nonsense," said Mohinder. "Molly and I won't hear of it. I'll take the couch for the time being." He said it with an air of finality, like he knew that Matt wouldn't protest once 'the Molly factor' was thrown out there. He probably did know. Wasn't that why Matt was here and not in some cheap motel? Because of Molly, whom he had been unable to resist from the moment he'd first laid eyes on her? She had a way about her – an ability to wrap him so tightly around her little finger that he would do anything for her. Anything at all.

When the question of sleeping arrangements was settled, Molly went back to her room to draw and Mohinder excused himself to go make tea. Matt figured this was an excuse to leave him alone but he didn't pry. Even if Dr. Suresh's thoughts did have a habit of leaking through sometimes, he had learned the hard way with Janice that people did not like it when he listened in.

Picking up his bags, he dropped them on the bed and started to unzip one of them. Then he stopped, shaking his head. He wasn't going to be here long enough to unpack anyway, so why bother?

Instead, he wandered out of the room and back down the hall way. He could hear running water and then the click of the igniter as Mohinder turned on the gas range. Approaching the small kitchenette, he found the other man placing two tea cups on the table.

"Would you care for some tea?" Mohinder asked.

"No thanks, Dr. Suresh. More of a coffee man myself."

"I see." Mohinder's expression deepened into thoughtful concern. "Matthew," he said cautiously, setting down the tin canister, which Matt assumed was the tea, and taking a step out of the kitchen area. "I believe it would be more comfortable for all of us if you would call me Mohinder."

Matt shifted uncomfortably. He had heard Molly call Mohinder by his name enough times in the past few weeks and sometimes he even caught himself doing it in his own mind, but only on those occasions when he'd spent too much time with the little girl. So much had happened in the past year, hell, the past few months alone, and much of it had shaken his trust in other people. He couldn't keep Molly from wiggling her way into his heart, but she was it. He made that vow after Janice's betrayal.

"Matthew..." Mohinder began again and Matt could tell he was about to pull the Molly card. He didn't even have to be a mind reader to see her name leap to the tip of the other man's tongue.

"I know, I know... do it for Molly, right?" He sighed. "I'm sorry, doc, but you don't understand," he said, and then stopped to consider the fact that when he met Mohinder, he was working for the people running tests on Molly. "Okay, so maybe you do. It's been rough lately, you know?"

Mohinder nodded and motioned for Matt to sit down at the table. When Matt joined him, he said, "Indeed I do know that sentiment, Matthew. I came to the United States to settle the loose ends left by my father's death and have since had my entire life turned upside down. Trust is a priceless commodity for each of us and I am well aware that I have given you no assurances that you can place your trust with me."

"Yeah," Matt echoed, summing up all that he was feeling in that one word. "Exactly."

An awkward silence followed in which Mohinder's thoughts once again leaked their way into Matt's brain and (once again) Matt was thankful that they were in another language. At least, some of them were. Towards the tail of a rather lengthy discourse, he caught fragments of _"... name was on father's list..." _and _"... need to ask about it before it turns into another Sylar..."_

However, the sudden whistling of the tea kettle broke the heavy silence and Matt mercifully heard no more as Mohinder was suddenly too busy fixing his cup of tea to think anything else. When he returned to the table with his steaming cup, however, his expression was all the more serious.

"So I guess the whole name thing isn't the only little chat we have to have, huh?" Matt tried to joke and failed.

"Something like that, yes," Mohinder answered with a curt nod. "Matthew, when you were in the hospital, you said that you were there when Sylar killed Molly's family."

"Yeah?"

"You are aware of what Sylar is? Was, I should say?"

One look was all it took for Matt to see what Mohinder was driving at. Did Matt know that the serial killer known as Sylar was really a monster with horrendous and unexplained power? "Yeah, I know what he was. I know what he did to those people." And what he might have done to Molly, he didn't add.

"And you know about the things Molly can do, as well?" Mohinder pushed.

When they met, Matt had been part of a team sent to destroy the Walker Tracking System. He had no clue at the time that it wasn't a machine or computer program but the little girl he had once promised to protect. "Yes," he answered more seriously this time. "Look, Mohinder, I'm not going to kill her. I'm not like Sylar." _I'm not a monster, no matter what my wife might think._

"I was not suggesting that you would, Matthew. It is quite evident that you are as fond of Molly as I am. I don't believe you would willingly do harm to her." Mohinder's words were soothing and friendly, though his voice still held a note of urgency.

"Then what? Why the Twenty Questions?" Matt asked.

"There really is no delicate of putting this, is there?" Mohinder questioned, mostly to himself. He sighed as he looked at Matt. "My father was the late Dr. Chandra Suresh."

"I've heard of him," Matt responded, leery.

"Through Bennet, I would suspect." Matt nodded and Mohinder continued, "then you might know that my father was trying to locate the people whom he believed had been gifted with certain genetic... enhancements."

"Enhancements? That's one way of putting it, doc. Lemme guess, my name was on your old man's list?'

Mohinder confirmed this with a grim expression and a nod of his head. He explained briefly how he had been taken in by Sylar and duped, not finding out the true nature of his traveling companion until the very end and then concluded with, "I was hoping, Matthew, that you could see your way clear to tell me the nature of your own ability. If we are to live together, for all our sakes and safety, there should be no secrets in that department."

The absurdity of the request alone was enough to make Matt burst into laughter. "Secrets, doc, are the least of our worries."


End file.
